I had to take a bit of a break from shaping rocks. I'm currently building an English cabinet-maker's box for the 9*2 surgical black, and due to the thinness of it, glued it in. But, I forgot a basic thing. One of the neat things about wood is that it can compress a bit, and stone doesn't. As a result, the end pieces wound up a bit shorter than the stone. Rather than spend 8 hours sanding the stone down, or a couple hours chiseling out the blocks and replacing them, I decided to build the surface up a bit with nail polish, then sand them flat. I should probably back up a bit. There are a few different schools of thought when it comes to oil stone boxes. 1. The box protects the stone. 2. The box keeps dust off the stone. 3. It looks cool. 4. It keeps any oil on the stone, and off of other projects and tools. The English joiner or cabinet maker adds a fifth option. 5. The box makes the entire length of the stone usable. They do this by adding end grain pieces about an inch long to both ends of the stone, and flattening the stone and end pieces together. This helps to mitigate stone dishing, and helps the stone last longer. ...neither of which is a factor when it comes to surgical black or translucent Arkansas stones. So, we are back at number three, it looks cool, and gives an extra inch of runway in exchange for two inches of extra wood. In effect, it turns a 9" stone into a 10" stone, at the cost of making the box 2" longer than it otherwise might have been. The idea seems to be a solely U.K. based quirk, which is a shame, as it's a useful technique for getting the most out of a stone, and I've got some ideas towards making it workable on double sided stones, but that's for another post. @twhite suggested I ought to do a thread about this box, so here it is. I decided something as enduring as surgical black deserved a box that was just as American, and equally enduring. Oak. Luckily, I happened to have an old oak butcher block style tabletop handy. As you can see, I'm not an expert hand tool user, but it works. The end grain blocks for the ends of the stone. How it's going to be laid out. Test fit-up and ready for gluing. ...and the first major screw-up. Don't clamp the ends of the box. It pushes the wood end pieces below the stone. The easiest way to fix this would be to chisel out the blocks and start over with new end pieces. I decided the risk to the .25" stone was too great, so I would build up the surface instead with clear nail polish or lacquer. But first... ...an application of mixed beeswax and mineral oil. This is my go-to for surface treatment for just about everything wood related. It's mostly reversible, and it won't affect any further wood treatments. They can go on right on top of the mineral oil/beeswax mixture. In an ideal world, this would would be the last step before sanding everything flush. Mineral oil and beeswax is also nicknamed "sanding butter," and is used whenever you want to use wet/dry sandpaper and water to wet sand wood for a really nice polished finish. Of course, yours truly screwed that up, and will be wet/dry sanding fingernail polish instead, a couple hundred layers later. Should still look exquisite when done. Here's where I'm at now in the process. ...and here's the purpose of those blocks. You want them made from a dense hard seasoned wood. If they do much expanding and contracting, they can shatter your stone. Hope you guys found this useful and entertaining. Edit: the stone is flattened and sanded to 500 grit. I plan to go to 600 grit and sand both the stone and wood blocks through a progression to 1000 grit wet/dry paper, but because of my screw-up, I'll likely go all the way back to 220 grit and work my way back up through the grits.
Here's the original box I made for it, before deciding that due to the uneven nature of the stone's underside, it would need to be glued in place, and if I was going to glue it, might as well make it nice. Here's the stone as received. An old Dan's whetstone second from 20 years ago. That was before Dan wised up and started finishing the seconds and offering them at a 20% discount rate. Once upon a time, you could buy a pile of rocks for $15-20 each. The seller I purchased it from did exactly that, and bought a truck load of Arkansas stones, and has steadily sold his stones off over the years. Now he was down to his last few, and just wanted them gone. For $50 shipped, I bought this surgical black and two 8*2" translucents unflattend, which will eventually make their appearance as well in this thread. The specific gravity for the surgical black is 2.7432, for those who care about such things. I decided to measure it, since once glued, there wouldn't be any way to do so, short of destroying the box.
You could just mill the box out of aluminum. Use brass for the blocks. Put a wedge on one side of the blocks, and hey presto, cleanable box, that you can sand down with your stone. You'd have to be a machinist for that. Back in the day, some boxes were made of cast iron. Though those were intended to serve as oil baths as well, some of them.
Most important part of buying any natural sharpening stone. Buy the big one. If you can't buy the big one, buy the interesting looking one. If you can't buy either the big one or the interesting one, buy the cheap one.
Once I drilled out the lid, and chiseled out leftover bits, I used infill finger planes to clean up the inside. ...well, to clean it up as much as I felt like doing. Between knots and wood grain reversal, I ought to have made it the base, not the other piece. The brass and rosewood three plane trio in the picture above cost me $14 from harbor freight. It's best to think of them as built and usable, but in need of finishing. I used a belt sander to round off the corners on them and make them much more comfortable (and nicer looking) to use. The steel used for the blades isn't the greatest, but it works and holds an edge long enough for most tasks, including this one. I've had them for a year or so, and they've come in surprisingly handy. Like many other things from harbor freight, you'll need to look at them closely before buying. Edit: A router plane would have been a better option, but you use what you have. Unless you have an electric router, and you want to use hand tools.
Decided to make one more for my coticule. This one is held in with friction, not glue, so it can be popped out for use with water instead of oil. I was sweating the sanding part, as there isn't much coticule left on this stone. I sanded the end that had the thickest coticule left until it was nearly flush, then sanded both until everything was level. This one took less than half the time of the other box, proving that repetition breeds speed (or that walnut is easier to work than oak). My next project is going to be a dutch cheese press, then a few more stones boxes after that.
